WASHINGTON, May 31: A federal judge has demanded the US government reveal if it monitored conversations between lawyers and their foreign clients who were detained as possible terror suspects.

Judge Steven Gold in a ruling this week gave the government three weeks to answer whether its controversial eavesdropping programme covered communication between lawyers from the US-based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and their Muslim clients from Arab and South Asian countries.

The CCR filed a lawsuit in 2002 charging that the administration of President George W. Bush violated US civil rights guarantees when it rounded up foreign Muslims in a dragnet after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

The class action suit names eight men who it alleges were held for four to nine months, never charged with terrorist links and were subject to abuse during their detention.

Following revelations in December 2005 about a domestic eavesdropping programme CCR lawyers called on the government to acknowledge if it had monitored conversations with their clients in the suit, who include nationals from Pakistan, Egypt and Turkey.—AFP